I really liked the gameplay itself, it applied the core of Inscryption card game to Pokemon
But I REALLY wish it was a bit more generous with its resources
I had to grind hard at most points of the game, especially before the last bosses
And it was the ugly kind of grind

Sometimes the randomness of the cards got to me
I kept pulling useless berries and incompatible Pokemon over many turns
But the AI sometimes went through that too, so it didn't feel unfair
Hell, the Last Boss went through that!

I wish more Pokemon had special effects, they were quite rare
For example, why shouldn't a Doduo have Fork Attack?
Why shouldn't Ekans have a Debilitating?
Why shouldn't a Golem summon Boulders?
It could be more creative in that regard

The game could get some changes and balancing
But it still was quite a journey and it left me satisfied

A way more polished version of Vampire Survivors with some tones of Nova Drift.

It's possible to make some REALLY overpowered builds, but it felt weirdly railroaded.
Like I wasn't making the builds, just discovering the correct combination for the character and weapon.
I tried hard to not make the same build everytime.

Visibility was also a big problem, especially the enemies.
Took a while to get used to, but some more runs down the line and I was okay.

Had a lot of fun with the game, about 10 hours.
Didn't like the grind so I'm not going to stay for all the nights.
Just tried the most interesting builds I could notice, got the interesting achievements and GG.

Loved this bundle of miraculous contradictions.
It's a Metroidvania Soulslike, but somehow respects your time.
It's quite hard, anxiety inducing, yet it's not stressing somehow.
It's dark, even grotesque at times, yet beautiful in its own way.
I'll discuss each of those points below.

- It's a metroidvania that respects your time.
I get lost very easily at metroidvanias, and I hate backtracking, as I have a hard time remembering the locked spots.
But this was fully countered by a GREAT map system, showing passages, discovered or not, and secret completion.

- It's a soulslike that respects your time.
I was afraid of raging and getting stuck at the same boss for hours, but it never happened. The bosses were mostly quite fair and at worst I've spent 40 minutes retrying one of the bosses.
Losing progress when you die is also a quite common trope in the genre, yet death has no punishment other than going back to the last safe spot here.

- It's hard and anxiety inducing, but not stressing somehow.
Overall exploration is riddled with enemies, that get progressively more annoying to deal with. Fighting all enemies of some areas is more difficult than some of the bosses, in my opinion. It's not an easy game.
Yet, perhaps thanks to lack of punishment for death and the various safe spots, it wasn't stressing to explore.
The bosses felt fair, especially in the lategame where you're more than powerful enough to beat them on the first try if you have good reflexes. I'm not, but I still beat a lot of them on the second try.

- It's beautiful despite being dark or grotesque.
The environment was perfectly crafted, and most of the time tells the story with visuals alone. It's lonely, it's broken, it's corrupted, yet pleasing to see most of the time.
There are areas at the end of the game that are outright grotesque and unsettling, and I can't say those were pleasing, but they served a great purpose to increase tension and even anxiety.
Also, Lily is cute and the spirits are cool.

Some extra thoughts:
- Movement feels great and the progression for it is also rewarding.
- I could reach max level without any grind, just not skipping enemies most of the time and wearing the XP buff items.
- Getting to 100% achievements wasn't hard, just be mindful of walls and floors that look somewhat different.
- The OST is AMAZING at some parts, but somewhat weak at others. I personally disliked the last area's soundtrack, with gasping and no melody. Felt like a forced way to overwhelm and stress the player. The OST from the start is wonderful.
- Builds are quite relaxed and that's cool, you can go with mostly anything you want, I didn't even use the strongest version of the main spirit to finish the game.

Some of the flaws were:
- The secrets, although optional and most of the time intuitive, force you into a habit of hugging the walls. I luckily didn't have much trouble with it, but it's not that good.
- There are too many enemies on the areas close to the endgame, so I felt pressed to skip them. Some are quite annoying even, especially at the northeast section of the world map.
- There are multiple paths you can take at times, but some are clearly meant to be taken first. I somehow went for the wrong one every time. I'm not sure if I take the blame there or if it was lack of intuitiveness.

Overall, loved the game.
Beat it 100% in 21 hours, while playing relaxed.
Can recommend it.
The credits song slaps.

It really makes you feel like a dwarf digging a hole.
You can also feel the great amount of care the devs put into it.

Awesome multiplayer fun with friends.
But even playing with randoms feels nice.
Never have I seen such a great player base.
And the merit for that goes to the game design.

Great variety of weapons, upgrades, missions and enemies.
It gets a bit repetitive after a hundred hours.
But it's a coop experience and feels great nonetheless.

I wish the "lategame" progression was faster.
After the character's max level, you only get new content through rare upgrades.
Still, the devs keep pouring new stuff so it's okay.

I played this twice, 100%ing it on the second time.

You can feel every drop of love the devs put into it.
Wonderful humor, great mechanics and variety.
The attention to detail is out of this world.
But...

Although it's thematic, the game is clearly unfair with its rolls, especially for the enemies.
They most of the time roll EXACTLY what they need, even under status effects.
You learn to accept and expect that, but it's annoying.

The character variety is great, but some are just bad.
Yes, fuck you, Witch.
Personally...
Rogue > Jester > Warrior: mostly feel rewarding to play and build around.
Robot > Engineer > Witch: feel frustrating more than half the time, with quite limited options.

There isn't much variety to the choices you have in the dungeon, as the equipments are quite RNG based.
It's tolerable of course, especially considering the luck theme.
But it adds insult to injury when you play bad characters.

STILL
I love and respect this game.
The ending is amazing and memorable, you can feel the frustration of the 36 episodes washing away.

I wholeheartedly recommend it for those who can bear with some unfairness.

Had a blast playing it.
And by playing I mean min maxing the shit out of it.

The Squad system is very well built.
Units could be more unique, but they have random traits, different stats and a cool affinity/element system.
Leadership growth was the main point of fun for me, as any Unit could become a Squad Leader and be about as relevant as story characters gameplay-wise.
Mixing those systems, along with permadeath, made it a really cool and personal experience.

The story is okay, although somewhat cliched.
It really is nothing very special, but it has some nice characters and actually pretty decent writing.
The character Bonds were shallow, but I liked how they affected the epilogue.

I played on hard mode, with permadeath.
It was honestly quite difficult at the start, as there are lots of features and techs missing.
But as the game progressed, it got gradually easier and easier, and the last boss was a walk in the park.
However, if I had lost some more troops early on, it might have been way harder.
This is a design flaw of permadeath games, where the game is too easy if you do well most of the time, and impossible if you make too many blunders.
I also abused the Force Surrender mechanic as soon as I could, so I maxed out the Tech Tree at 2/3 of the game, way earlier than intended.
So yeah, it's a very hard game, but you can snowball.

I wish it had a larger name pool, and of course the planned rename.
But at least I had fun making a Squad out of Magdalens.

...and the elephant in the room.
There are 4 distinct art styles in the game:
1. Cutscene world graphics
They're RPG Maker sprites, extremely overused everywhere, but in this game they were decent quality, especially due to being background-ish.
2. Cutscene portrait art
Honestly quite bad for me, it's a style I dislike, and the quality isn't the best.
Took me quite a while to get used to it, and it's the weakest point of the game for me.
3. Overworld pixel art
Really good, although simple, but it's distinct enough and portrays everything in an easy to identify way.
Except for Raskuja, his color scheme always made me forget he hadn't acted yet.
4. Battle pixel art
ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT.
If not for how this looked, I wouldn't have given it a chance, being sincere.

All in all, I quite enjoyed the game.
My favorite in the genre of SRPG due to its progression and customization.
Would spend 30 hours on the Squad Management again.

AH!
The key under ESC speeds up the game by a ton.
I only discovered it at the last chapters, don't make the same mistake.

Really short and sweet, with a wide variety of classes.
It's honestly pretty simple and not that hard.
I recommend playing on Hard mode.

I didn't lose any Folk but I believe it has permadeath.
Too few Artefacts and they don't change that much.
Saved items for the last boss, unnecessarily.

Classes are fun to discover and experiment with.
The progression feels really nice as well.

The challenge modes, that give replayability, aren't that fun to me.
They are more about locking out most classes on your run.
So, for me, who enjoyed the class variety, it kinda ruins it.

Still, very nice game for a REALLY small price and 2 hours of fun.

Fantastic game with some annoying game design.
God knows how much I love the time maid.
But this game doesn't respect the player, holy damn.

Absolutely gorgeous art and as wonderful as expected soundtrack.
Everything related to the time mechanics was just top tier.
But the enemy design and some of the traps were very clearly designed to be very annoying.

Bosses are hard, in a good way.
Each of them feels very distinct from each other and most use the time mechanics really well.
The Graze mechanic is very overpowered at some points, but serves as survivability, and that's kinda cool.

I wish the game toned down the artificial difficulty.
I wish it put less enemies and traps so you could backtrack properly.
I honestly wish it removed some of the enemies and traps, especially the ones that remove control from the player or require a lot of waiting.

Sakuya is great though.

I played the alpha, I played the beta, and now I've played the full version with DLC.
And I had an absolute blast.

First, the combat:
It's the culmination of the Action RPG, extremely polished and very customizable, with a quite high skill ceiling.
The enemies are surprisingly varied, although a few of them get annoying on the long run, like the skeleton shark.
The bosses, especially the optional ones, were way harder than I ever expected, thankfully not due to unfairness at any point.
Son of the Beach is the most challenging boss I have in recent memory.

Then, the exploration:
The maps are ENORMOUS, filled with chests, puzzles, quests and a ton of plants, holy shit there are plants everywhere.
Quite interesting usage of the MMO setting to have random players walk around all the time showing the path through the areas while keeping things alive.
Most areas have optional content that requires a lot of platforming, or "parkour", which was honestly hard.
A sad point is that most optional chests aren't worth the trouble for their reward, but you never know if they are going to be good, and the challenge itself is interesting.
There were also LOTS of quality of life features, like very well done fast travel, editable markers on the maps, list of drop areas for every item, list of all traders, well explained effects and skills, etc.

Followed by the side quests:
Excellent experience doing all of them, always with some interesting combat or puzzle.
The quests were very dense with funny puns and references, and I personally loved it, as it populated the world while keeping the tone quite light.
Hell, I fought Sephisloth and The Goatfather, it can't get better than that.

My favorite part, the characters:
The game had a huge focus on its characters, and it worked perfectly to me, I liked most of them.
Despite being an amnesiac silent protagonist, Lea is EXTREMELY expressive and lovable. Her personality grows in a very clear way from every new character she meets, it's pleasant to watch.
Still, CrossWorlds is an MMORPG, so that gave space for other players to experience roughly the same as the actual player, and comment on it with a semi-meta perspective.
Emilie ended up very dear to me, mostly due to her authentic comments and role in the story. She was always a joy to have in the party. Unlike C'tron for example, who only commented on what was happening without adding much, feeling quite artificial.
Other main characters had quite distinct personalities, but from all of those uncited ones, Sergey takes the cake, being the somehow not annoying ever present guide.
The relationships between the characters also feel quite real, and they change visibly as the story progresses.

And what made this a masterpiece:
The story was genuine.
It had twists, although most were predictable.
It was emotional, especially thanks to Lea's expressiveness.
It got interesting, with non-cliched interesting takes on certain subjects.
And most of all, it was engaging and made me want to know more.

Some small downsides were:
- The setting is actually an intergalactic civilization with space trading and all that, but the dialogue feels very contemporary, which was honestly weird.
- Even after 90 hours of playing it and jumping around, I still couldn't quite grasp the sense of height on the platforming, having to cope with the aim marker to help visualize. It's a top-down 2d game, so I understand the troubles, but damn.
- The arena was annoying and grindy, although fully optional, but I wanted the pets.

And my only real complaint:
The dungeons were too big, filled with hard puzzles and barely any dialogue.
Especially the 3 dungeons in quick succession, with a very unintuitive element.
The DLC dungeon felt way better, so I assume there was a lot of feedback from the players after that.
But those dungeons rest as a traumatic memory in my brain.

Still, I absolutely loved CrossCode and I wish all the best for the developers.
It was a heartfelt game, and I felt it in my heart.

When Niko cries, I cry.

I played OneShot way back then, when meta narratives with equally meta mechanics were still very fresh.
Absolutely loved the experience, and it remained one of my favorite games of all time even with its very short length.

You know that urge to save your favorite piece of the meal for the last bite?
Well, I had never done the Solstice, and had that on my backlog for ages.
Today I played through everything again, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Solstice was a game changer, and the years made the closure even sweeter.

OneShot will live on in my memories, and so will Niko.

Ring of Pain is a quite challenging and unforgiving roguelike.
I like the puzzle energy some moments bring, but it's an overall painful experience.
For some reason I kept coming back to it though, and it plagued my day with an urge to play more.

My biggest problem with the game is that it's very RNG based.
There are a ton of items, but most of them don't go very well together.
Similarly, there are a lot enemies, and sometimes they go very damn well together.

Still, it's very unique and well done.
There are a lot of mechanics, and they interact with each other perfectly.
Some items are exceptionally creative with their effects, and that keeps the game fresh.
There is a lot of pain and suffering, but I don't regret it.

Alina of the Arena is a quite fun and challenging roguelike.
It dual-wields the deck building of Slay the Spire with the absolute information of Into the Breach.

There are thematic mechanics, such as the weapons/items being thrown by the audience and the weapon dual-wielding.
The random paths are interchangeable, and that allows more adaptability than the single choice per stage of StS.
Having only one character also makes it very fast-paced when compared with ItB, and less puzzle-like.

Sincerely, it's a hard game, but you should be able to see your own mistakes and weaknesses and deal with them.
I don't like the slight meta progression on the accessory/inventory slots, but you should get to max power in 2~4 runs, while still having classes to unlock.
Some classes work better than others, but they're still reasonably varied, and honestly surprised me on how differently each one deals with certain challenges.

Loved the game, already went through the two true endings, and the only thing I wish for is more content.
If you're struggling, my strategy suggestion is to become very mobile and use a spear.

Anxiety inducing and intentionally clunky.
I had dropped this before, but I willed myself through it this time.
It is a very well done game, but not my type.

Had some fun going full Arstotzka and fucking with EZIC.
Ended up with $300 but still living in the cheapest house.
At least everyone was still alive and Sergiu was happy.

The sci-fiest sci-fi clusterfuck story that had no right to work this damn well

13 Sentinels has 13 different stories with different genres
Some work better than others according to taste, but the moments in which they cross feel amazing
It had a plethora of plot twists and it was all very confusing, until I noticed a cloudy map of facts forming in my head
I think it ends up more confusing than it should be because of the severely weaving of flashbacks and time jumps
Still, eventually you figure out all the mysteries, hopefully before the game has to explain them to you

The battle side wasn't anything spectacular, but it was entertaining
I rushed XP upgrades from the getgo and snowballed until the penultimate fight, where I lost for the first time
The last boss was an amazing battle but it required a specific build to beat, which was pretty different from what I had amassed throughout the game, so I had to grind there
But other than that it remained as a nice break from the mindboggling story

Despite it all, 13 Sentinels is a wonderful game and a quite unique experience
It deserves the love it gets from the curious few who played it

*Played it perfectly well on the Switch emulator YUZU

Personal tier list
S: Natsuno, Miura, Ogata
A: Amiguchi, Kisaragi, Juro
B: Takamiya, Hijiyama, Yakushiji, Sekigahara
C: Shinonome, Gouto
D: Fuyusaka